Read today’s Kaiser Health News
In other news:
15 defining healthcare trends and challenges Really thoughtful review of current trends.
About health insurance/insurers
Medicare Advantage enrollment growth slows drastically: The number of people enrolled in a private Medicare Advantage plan grew just 3.1% from 2024 to 2025 — well below projections from the federal government and Wall Street, and one of the slowest years of growth ever in the program.
A little more than 34.4 million older adults and people with disabilities were paying into a Medicare Advantage plan as of Feb. 1 compared with the 33.4 million people in a plan at the same time last year, according to new federal data analyzed by STAT.
About pharma
'Big Three' PBMs seek appeal in legal spat with Federal Trade Commission: The three largest pharmacy benefit managers are looking to take their legal back-and-forth with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to the 8th Circuit Court, according to a court filing issued late last week.
CVS Health's Caremark, Cigna's Express Scripts and UnitedHealth's Optum Rx filed a notice of appeal Friday after a Missouri District Court determined that the FTC's case could move ahead. The agency filed suit against the so-called "Big Three" in September, alleging they played a key role in inflating the price of insulin.
The PBMs hit back with a countersuit in November, arguing the FTC's actions were unconstitutional.
About the public’s health
The Political Rise of the Anti-Vax Movement An excellent analysis from The Financial Times.
Flu vaccine this season may be poorly matched, early CDC data suggests: This season's influenza vaccine may have been a poor match to a strain of the flu virus that caused many infections this winter, early data released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suggests.
The CDC's latest data come as much of the U.S. is finally seeing signs of a slowdown in influenza activity after waves of illness this past fall and winter that climbed to the worst rates recorded from hospitals and doctor's offices since the 2009 swine flu pandemic.
Texas measles outbreak grows to 124 cases, mostly among unvaccinated: Almost all of the cases are in unvaccinated individuals or individuals whose vaccination status is unknown, and 18 people have been hospitalized so far, according to the Texas Department of State Health Services (DSHS). Five cases included those who have been vaccinated.
Children and teenagers between ages 5 and 17 make up the majority of cases with 62, followed by 39 cases among children ages 4 and under.
HHS may conduct 'rolling review' of health web pages for Trump EO compliance, judge rules: A federal judge is allowing a temporary restraining order related to the abrupt removal of health information web pages to expire, though those resources will for now remain as they are as the Trump administration begins a rolling review of their content.
About healthcare IT
Digital Screen Time and Myopia :This systematic review and dose-response meta-analysis of 45 studies involving 335 524 individuals revealed a significant dose-response association, characterized by a sigmoidal curve, of screen time with the odds of myopia. Myopia risk increased significantly from 1 to 4 hours of screen time and then rose more gradually thereafter.
About health technology
The US risks a heavy price for cutbacks in research spending Excellent analysis by The Financial Times.
One particularly quotable paragraph is:
“Roughly 2 per cent of US federal spending is allocated to science and related R&D. This compares with about 12 per cent of the federal budget in the 1960s during the post-Sputnik space race and 5 per cent during the 1990s and early 2000s. There has also been a sharp reversal in the relative roles played by governmental and private expenditures. During the 1960s, the federal government paid for about two-thirds of all US R&D compared with 30 per cent by the private sector. More recently, the federal government has accounted for only 20 per cent of total R&D spending compared with 70 per cent by the private sector.”
The question is: what happens with further government cutbacks?
About healthcare finance
Blackstone and Omers look to offload healthcare groups in multibillion-dollar deals:
Blackstone and Omers have each put multibillion-dollar healthcare services companies up for sale, as private equity groups seek to offload their investments in a push to return cash to investors, according to people familiar with the matter. Private equity giant Blackstone has hired advisers to work on a sale of its majority stake in health insurance software provider HealthEdge, hoping to clinch a deal that values the company at more than $2.5bn, three people said. Meanwhile, Omers, one of Canada’s largest pension funds, is also working with advisers to sell Premise Health, which operates one of the biggest direct-access care networks in the US, seeking a valuation of about $2bn, the people added.